Rescue workers know that every second counts when they respond to an emergency call — but sometimes their speed kills:

* An ambulance driver killed three young children in Brooklyn last year when she sped through a light while responding to a call. The driver, Anne Lamberson, escaped a prison sentence when the mother of the children, deciding that Lamberson had suffered enough, agreed to five years probation for the driver.

* Three young people were killed in 1997 when a Queens firetruck slammed into their packed Mitsubishi Galante in Sunnyside, Queens.

Prosecutors eventually cleared the firetruck driver of any wrongdoing. The car carried six college friends heading to a movie. The three other passengers survived with serious injuries.

* A firetruck rushing to the scene of a downed power line killed a firefighter’s daughter three years ago on a rain-swept street on Staten Island. Bridgette Flagherty, 16, died while riding in a car with a family friend, who also was killed.

* A passenger in a stolen car was killed in 1994 when it collided with a firetruck heading to a call in The Bronx.

* Rain-slicked streets and an afternoon blaze led two firetrucks to slam into each other on the Lower East Side in 1992. Eleven firefighters and two civilians were injured in the crash, in which the trucks leaped onto the curb amid terrified pedestrians.

* A 24-year-old woman died after the car in which she was riding was broadsided by a Queens fire engine in Ozone Park in 1987.